Twice Changed Sabers
by gibbousmoons
Summary: Two changes. Two Sabers. One dies peacefully, surrounded by companions. One is summoned early, by a familiar face. Perhaps this time things will work out for the better? Featuring Cu Chulainn as Caster.


. . . And King Arthur died on that fairy island, hid away from the world and weeping at the loss of his Kingdom, lamenting the death of his dream. He swore an oath to make right his failures, to live up to his unspoken promise. But some say that though he wept on his deathbed, his eyes cleared after a time. He spoke to his sworn brothers, the gathered remnants of Camelot from both sides of that terrible battle, and smiled.

Because they had made the impossible possible for a time, stood against evil and pushed it back, and that, Arthur breathed, was a thing beyond the judgment of right or wrong. If fate had brought them low in the end?

What of it?

They'd lived the lives they'd meant too, and though mistakes had been made, the Round Table would never die so long as a single chair was filled.

But of course, we know that both stories are utter poppycock, because King Arthur was a woman, not a man.

XIXI

_three weeks ago_

It was a beautiful night for a summoning, Rin Tohsoka thought as she retraced the runic diagram for the fourth time, carefully avoiding the cluttered edges of the room where she'd carelessly shoved table and chairs against the walls. She'd gone to sleep only hours before, intending to get a good night's rest for the math test tomorrow- today now- but had been struck by a sudden thought.

She'd been planning on summoning at the precise moment of maximum power, when she would have the most Prana available in the surrounding area, the greatest physical purity according to her cycle, the weeks to prepare her mind for the most powerful Servant. She'd gone over her figures one more time before putting on her night clothes, and the optimum time was still two weeks away, fourteen days until she entered the fifth Holy Grail War.

Fifteen days for someone else to summon a Saber before she did.

The thought had catapulted her out of bed, hair in disarray and clothes crooked. She'd snatched the Tohsoka amulet off her bedstand, grabbed a bag of charged jewels, and barreled down to the manor's main dining room. In every previous war, the Saber had made it to the final two Servants remaining, regardless of which Heroic Spirit Saber embodied.

She'd been so stupid! Even assuming that the fake priest wasn't lying to her, and Saber hadn't already been summoned, someone could lie to him, heaven knew she'd done it often enough, and then what? Someone else would have summoned a Saber, and she'd be at a disadvantage from the very beginning! As if she wasn't already at enough of a handicap, competing against venerable magi while still a student in her family's style, powerful though it was.

Better to try for a Saber, or any of the knight classes, before other masters summoned them all. Better to have tried and failed than to get stuck with Caster. Ugh. No Caster'd ever survived to the final two. Almost as worthless as Assassin, because Saber, Archer, and Rider all have magic resistance, rendering the magus class nearly impotent against the greatest contenders. Berzerker would also be bad, Rin thought as she inspected her work again, searching for any minute and overlooked flaws. That class had almost absurd Prana costs, and caused too much collateral damage for her tastes. The Second Owner was supposed to limit lives lost, after all.

Finding no flaws, Rin set the gemstones in a circle around the Tohsoka amulet, which was in the middle of the array.

She took a breath.

And another.

And a third.

Then she began to chant.

XIXI

Golden eyes flicked from one side to the other, and white hair was tossed slightly as he looked behind him. Rin pulled up her shoulders while he wasn't looking at her, and regained her poise. She could read his thoughts on his face, his approval, whoever she'd summoned wasn't going to win any points at deception. She saw him take in the ornate room, oak floors stained red-brown and heavily scuffed. Chairs and table pushed crookedly back against the walls, and a summoning array beneath him.

Finding no immediate threats, the Servant turned his eyes on his master. Informal dress, bed hair, desperation screaming in the tenseness of her arms and neck, so clearly worried, but she matched his evaluating gaze with her own.

He spoke in an average voice that reminded her of long hours learning, even and strong. "Hello. Are you my master?"

"Are you my Saber?" She replied.

And then both said, "Yes."

XIXI

_now_

Shirou threw himself out the window. Rolling once to bleed off his momentum, he glanced through the hole into his house. "Nothing, he must have gone around to- GUH!" He flinched back from a blue blur of motion that punted him in the chest with its boot, slamming him back twenty feet and through his shed wall.

Where was the- Ah. There's the pain.

Are chests supposed to be caved in like that? Shirou wondered as his gaze wandered. Chest, wall, chest, injured man in blue with spear (not that he'd caused the injury, but those are definitely blade wounds on his arms), chest again, dusty wall which he needed to clean before Sakura did, old magic circle activated by the blood pooling out of the edges of the boot-print on his chest. . . Was that a rib? Shirou wrenched his thoughts back to a relevant topic as his vision blurred.

There was a woman above him. Why was he on the floor? She lay her hand on his chest, and it hurt a whole lot less than it did earlier. "I am Servant Rider", she said, "Are you my master?"

Shirou gurgled, in a shocked sort of way.

"Well, that's a stupid question." The man in blue said. "I mean, he just summoned you for one thing, and for another. . . " He blurs into motion and leaps into the air, ricocheting of the ceiling and back towards Shirou. "He just got killed by Caster!"

Runes flared blue along Caster's boots, and Shirou's field of view swam as he struggled not to vomit at a sudden acceleration. Cool armored arms pick him up and leapt just in time, and Caster's foot impacts only the stone floor. Behind him, he sees the shed explode in a concussive wave, erupting into a mass of debris and splinters.

"Damn." The woman holding him swore, continuing to run as a corona of light appeared around her limbs, and Shirou had to take his eyes off the scenery as it blurred. She looked down at Shirou as she ran down the street and asked, voice low and urgent, "Master- Where is the nearest castle?"

XIXI

_twenty days ago, just past midnight_

Rin Tohsaka, in the privacy of her own head, thought of herself as a practical magus. She had relatively simple, if difficult, problems that she knew how to solve. She took care of immediate issues before they grew out of hand, allowing her to save time to work on more important concerns, such as unlocking her family's legacy.

Sometimes she cheated a little, but cheating was an integral part of being a magus! Knowing when to run the risks and try for the big payoff was something that all magi had to learn if they wished to excel, and was a valuable lesson that couldn't just be passed down through a magic crest, but that had to be learned by each practitioner in turn on their journeys towards Akasha!

Which was why she'd used so many gems to power the summoning ceremony. True, tradition dictated she summon under her own power, so as not to contaminate the call, but technically, it _was_ her power. Twenty less ten made ten remaining, and her father's necklace was almost completely discharged as well. But all was well, because she'd succeeded in summoning the most powerful, majestic, wonderful Servant!

A Saber!

Saber coughed, and Rin stopped rubbing her hands together. "Master, er." He shuffled in the recently replaced chair, and propped his head up on the tabletop with an arm. "Have you slept recently?"

"Just half an hour ago!" Rin replied.

Saber scanned her, eyes traversing up and down. "I. . . see." Rumpled hair pulled back in two messy tails, one slightly higher than the other. Eyes flushed, cheeks red. Shirt halfway tucked in, buttoned crooked. Skirt absent, replaced with a pair of loose flannel pants. "Master, I think getting to know each other can wait until morning, when you're properly rested. And awake." He raised one white eyebrow. "And dressed."

Rin raised an eyebrow of her own.

It stayed up.

After a moment's consideration, she nodded assent. The nod's forward motion, unfortunately, proved enough to destroy her already precarious balance, and the magus' head slammed into the placemat beneath it with a dull THUNK.

"Well, at least I'm not Caster," Emiya sighed, "that would be terrible, but I'm not sure if this isn't worse. It sure makes a mess of things."

And so the night was spent in wordless consideration on his part, and fevered dreams of 'showing them, showing them all that _she_ was the best' on his master's.

XIXI

_twenty days ago, nine a.m._

Rin Tosaka awoke to hazy recollections of. . . something nice. Whatever it was, it smelled like eggs, toast, and bacon. Her lips rose into a wide smile as she remembered summoning ahead of schedule, and receiving her Saber. "I only wish. . . I smell bacon." She sniffed once, twice, thrice, and growled. "Who's in my house?"

She threw on a sweater over her sleeping shirt and stalked down the stairs, years of kenpo training making her footsteps inaudible over the sizzle of succulent, delicious, mouth-watering bacon the intruder was frying in _her_ kitchen. She'd beat whoever it was black and blue, and if it was that freak Kirei, she'd give him a Gandr in the back. Then she'd tie whoever it was down and eat her liberated bacon right in front of them. That would show them!

And then she'd have to kill them and hide the body in the basement- or she could call the police. Rin shrugged, and put her hand on the kitchen door. She'd decide on the after finding out iftheir her food tasted as good as it smelled.

She raised her slipper-clad foot, channeled Od into her leg (making sure to include the ligaments), and kicked the door squarely beside the handle. It crashed open with a crack, and Rin strode after it. "Who the hell are- Saber?!" That morning's memories rushed back, not a dream after all. Summoning, summoning a Saber. She'd done it.

And he was cheerfully ignoring her as he removed the thick slices of bacon from an inch thick slab of steel, the handle of which he was holding in his other hand.

It was a truly odd picture, and the schoolgirl/magus' brain refused to handle if for a moment, until at last her mind made sense of what her eyes were seeing.

Her Servant had cleared a space in the middle of her kitchen, removed the wooden floor in a circle three feet wide, and replaced it with some sort of cooking apparatus. Numb with shock, she looked more closely and entered the room. The stove-thing looked almost normal, save for how the pan was being heated by a flaming broadsword. And the pan wasn't a pan at all, but another blade, this one nearly half a foot from tip to back.

Saber flicked his wrists, then moved so fast he blurred to Rin's sight. There was a soft scrape, and there was a table in front of her with a plate on it, one of her usual set. Then there was bacon on it, and eggs. And a mug of hot tea.

"I think I should introduce myself again, master." Saber spoke, golden eyes shining, lips twitching into a satisfied smirk. "I am Saber, a man of many talents, and the Servant that will win this Holy Grail War."

Rin picked up a piece of bacon and ate it.

Victory never tasted so good.

Once Rin had finished her crispy, delicious bacon she wiped her mouth primly with a napkin and wiped the grease off of her hands. No cause to let bad habits set in, even in the privacy of her own home. She had a reputation to consider, after all. Rin Tohsaka had to be the best at everything, after all.

But, today was Sunday and school was closed, since she didn't waste her time cozying up to minions (hypnosis was so much easier of an extra pair of hands was needed), she had the entire day free of prior engagements. As she watched her Saber with lazy eyes, she qualified her earlier thought. Free of any social engagements.

"I suppose we'll have to go see the overseer." At last she broke the silence, her disgusted tone the first sound in the kitchen since she'd laid her fork on her emptied plate. At Saber's quizzical look, she continued. "He's terrible. Absolutely terrible. I swear he's the biggest faker I'll ever meet!"

Saber's lips were pinched, but his eyes were dancing with mirth. "Hmph."

"I'm serious!" Rin said, and slammed her hand on the dark oak table, rattling her plate. "You hear about corruption in the Church, but Kirei'd stab his most trusted ally in the back just so he could offer condolences at the funeral!"

Saber ran his hand through his shock of white hair as he straightened, nearly breathless with glee, and gasped out. "It sounds like you've got a bit of a grudge. What did he do, traumatize you on your birthday? Give you the weapon that killed your family? Mismanage your money?"

On saying the last one, he noticed that his master flinched. "Oh, he didn't!" Saber gasped in mock horror, but raised his arms to fend off the surprisingly potent glare he got in return. "If you can't handle a little joking, master, perhaps you shouldn't insult people such? It can't be good for your complexion, getting so worked up."

Rin snapped. She stood up, reached over the table, grabbed Saber's red coat by its lapels, and pulled. "The Holy Grail War is no joking matter, Saber! Seven masters and seven heroes competing for the ultimate prize, if you don't take it seriously, then we'll die for sure!"

Emiya smothered a grin before it started, and contorted his face into a grim façade. He couldn't help it; Rin was so much fun to tease. He picked up his master by her armpits so that she wasn't hanging over the table, supported only by her toes and her grip on his jacket, and looked her dead in the eyes. "Don't worry, I will. . . Even if summoning me so early has scrambled my memories of my life."

The resulting scream was heard for nearly a mile as Rin unconsciously reinforced her lungs, diaphragm, vocal chords, and neck. "WHAT? !"

XIXI

Polished leather shoes impacted pavement with all the force and power of a sulking fourteen year old girl trained in ancient Chinese kempo as Rin stormed down the sidewalk, shoulders tensed, arms folded, clearly illustrating her displeasure for any and all to see.

Saber thought she looked adorable. "So we're going to church on Sunday morning. How pedestrian." He frowns. "And what will we say if someone asks what you're doing walking around town with a strange man?"

"We won't say anything, Saber, because you are immaterial, and cannot be seen at all." Rin ground out through clenched teeth.

Saber sighed. "All right, I'm sorry I riled you up, master. You're just too tense, that's all. Jumping at shadows is just as bad as not paying enough attention, in my book. I'll tell you what!" Rin heard his fingers snap, though she couldn't see them. "How about we treat this as a thought exercise? What _would_ you tell someone if they wanted to know what you were doing with a strange foreign man?"

"I'd hypnotize them into forgetting." Rin promptly replied, then slowed. "But if I couldn't, for some reason. . . I suppose I'd just tell them you're an uncle from England, here to check up on Nagato's old properties, and I'm taking you to meet their manager, who is also the local priest."

"Very good." Saber's voice was warm. "No actual lies in there, besides about where I'm from."

"So you're not English? For sure?"

"I don't know, perhaps if I was summoned at a better time, but as it is, I _think_ I'm from somewhere near mountains. The one nearby seems familiar, somehow."

Rin gave a small growl. "That's not very helpful."

"Neither was being summoned with a chunk of my memories missing." Her servant sniped back. "At least I remember how to use my skills, and being Saber is a nice advantage. So things aren't too bad, just a little annoying, that's all."

"I suppose." Rin hedged. "But I'm still not sure that was my fault." If he were an Archer, I'd suspect my Servant were lying to me and planning on betraying me later, but he doesn't have any ranks in Independent Action, and Saber is a notoriously Prana intensive class. He wouldn't be able to support himself.

Out loud, she continued. "When we get there, what are we going to tell the supervisor? I was planning on just mentioning that I'd summoned a Saber."

"You don't trust him?"

Rin shot a look at the origin of Saber's voice.

"I get it, you don't trust the man who raised you. Perfectly understandable."

The pair continued to walk in silence, until at last the looming visage of the church loomed high on the hill before them. "I just thought of something." Rin said suddenly, having stopped to rest in the shade of the woods by the road. "It's midmorning. Mass is probably being held now, and I'm not going to interrupt that."

A baritone voice, hale and hearty, rang out from the depths of the forest behind her, and Rin froze in shock. "I should hope not! I once walked peacefully with a monk to Mass, but I don't think you or your unseen companion a holy man. A witch perhaps, and her familiar, but neither of you would be a monk unless I've missed my mark."

Rin spun around, fingers cocked and ready to fire curses, but her sight was obscured by trees and undergrowth, limiting her vision. Her red-clad Servant materialized behind her, and murmured in her ear, "The forest has grown. I cannot see the road." A quick glance left confirmed this.

"Ready yourself." She said conversationally, but she licked her lips and swallowed. "I think we're about to fight the first battle in this war."

Before the sound of her last word had faded from his ear, Saber was in motion. Prana flowed up from his hand in a familiar shape, and his other grasped the empty air and _swung_. A yard-long arrow shattered against the flat of the blade, golden eyes tracked its path, and he retaliated.

The same sword that had served to shield him a moment before was notched on a bowstring, pulled back, and released. Then he flung his arm again, and two more swords flew forth into the darkening wood, one white, one black.

The man's voice echoed through the woods from the darkness in the distance, and sweat dripped down the nape of Rin's neck. She hadn't even seen Saber move, or heard the arrow before it broke. What kind of mess had she gotten herself into? "Servant Archer, at your service. I think my bow the better one. Shall I prove it?"

Saber twirled his fingers, letting another pair of black and white swords fall into them as he reinforced his eyes to see better in the half-darkness of the forest. He whispered, "Master, put your hand on my back, there should be a loop on the jacket. Do you have hold of it?"

Rin nodded, then realized he wasn't looking at her. "Yes. I have it."

"Good." Saber smiled, and turned his head to scan through the trees again. "Just don't let go until it's time, and you'll know what to do."

"I really do hate to interrupt a private conversation, but I'd like to go to Mass in a little while. I haven't been in hundreds of years, after all, and I suppose I've a few things I'd like to confess as well. Is the local priest the trustworthy sort?" Archer called through the gloom, voice seeming not to come from any direction in particular.

"My master seems to think he hasn't lived up to the cloth, if that's what you're asking." Saber said. His head continued to move back and forth, every now and then glancing up and down. "But I wouldn't be so sure you'll be able to make it. We have to meet with the priest as well, understand, and I'm not too sure my little master would be happy with me if she missed her appointment."

"A shame." The treetops rustled, all of them for nearly forty yards away from the Servant and master. He really did sound regretful, Rin thought. Perhaps they could come to some kind of temporary ceasefire? "A real shame, that." Then something metal hit the ground fifteen feet away with a dull THUMP.

The ground exploded in a burst of light and sound and force that nearly knocked her to the ground- but her hold on Saber's coat kept her upright. The dark forest was lit up brighter than noontime for a brief instant, searing her eyes. Saber grunted. Rin screamed in agony, but didn't release her hold on. . . an empty coat?

She couldn't see, couldn't hear, but she could _feel_ the impacts of weaponry before her, driven by superhuman strength. She scrambled back on her shaking legs until she felt a tree behind her, panic fuelling her movements through the agony behind her eyes. Was she crying? Rin couldn't tell, but as she slid into Saber's armored coat, she felt moisture on her arms. The ground shook at irregular intervals, and once she felt something stir her hair, but that was all. Images filled her mind, of Saber wounded by Archer's sneak attack, desperately trying to buy her time to recover, to help him, only to take wound after wound waiting in vain. After nearly a minute of blindness, of helplessness, her vision began to return.

What kind of Servant fought like this? What kind of Archer would lower himself to the methods of Assassin?

What was going on?

XIXI

It was obvious what was going on, from the moment the forest grew to cover the road. Emiya may not have fought Servants before (constantly stepping between Arturia and her opponents didn't count as fighting, per say), but he'd had plenty of experience fighting similarly powerful opponents. And if there's one tactic that everything liked to try on the weak little magic user with the astonishing kill streak, it was an ambush.

He may not be in exactly the same situation any more, but the principles were the same. Why waste energy in an all out fight if you can just finish it before it had even begun?

Granted, the flash-bang grenade _was_ surprising.

Emiya reacted on instinct for that first second, faster than the Servant could process whole thoughts. Flash spotted, close eyes, brace, deafen ears with Prana. Release Prana on ears, footsteps heard. Heavy, like a man falling from a tree, but a controlled fall. He'd used the momentum from the drop to coil himself up like a spring. Then came the leap to close combat. Eyes open, cursory glance out. Lincoln green clothes, male, bow on back. Identity confirmed.

Archer wasn't more than ten feet away, crouched low. Sword (short, double edged, steel, mundane- well made) drawn and ready to thrust. Archer leapt forward, but he'd already stepped sideways, Traced his blades (black/white, matched, mystic codes) and parried with one, attacked with the other.

Archer aborted his attack, as expected. Twisting in a swirl of green, he bled his speed into a roll, laid his hand on another tree, grabbed it and rolled around to the other side of the ancient oak. Arrows formed in the quiver on his back.

Saber smiled. "Found you now." He raised his hand, and his bow once again took form. A mental trigger was pulled, and the striking hammer fell.

"Trace on."

His Structural Grasp told him the arrow heads were moving, looping around to where his master was scrambling against a tree herself, so Saber reached for a familiar blade. He'd make this quick. The flamberge bladed rapier he drew wasn't exactly a Phantasm, more a half-rate mystic code than anything else.

An arrowhead shifted positions relative to its fellows, and Saber tracked the shot before it was fired, releasing his own to intersect three feet away from his master's helpless form. As the blade-shaped code met the cloth fletched shaft, the motion from the impact was carried back the association of 'parry', to the aggressor.

The yew bow's string broke under sudden strain, and Saber released a second blade.

"Gram."

The tree, and the entire forest behind it for nearly a hundred yards, vaporized in a flash of cleansing light. Emiya felt no heat from it, and the soil under his feet was still damp. He walked over to Rin, who was just beginning to show signs of comprehension. "Come on master. Let's get to the church."

She took his extended hand, and let him pull her to her feet. "Is he dead?" She asked, and began to walk back towards the road, now visible. On passing the charred earth, she stopped to stare. "Did you?"

"That was me, master, but I don't think I could kill Robin Hood so easily in a forest. He's nowhere nearby, though, unless he's stupider than he looks."

Rin shook her head and frowned as she resumed her walk up the road. "Pah. Like he ever had a chance against my Servant. We have his name now, too."

Saber evaluated his master out of the corner of his eye. Her legs were still unsteady, and her hand had dipped to the inner pocket of her skirt, where he knew she kept her Azoth knife and a few gems. Her eyes flicked from one side to the next, and her neck was tense. He'd have to get her to relax a little, distract her before she started thinking about how useless she'd been. Rin hated being useless.

"I've been thinking about what you asked earlier."

"Oh?" Raised eyebrow, that was a good sign.

Saber put his hands behind his head and smirked. "About what you should tell the overseer. Tell him I've gone by many names, but the most famous of them is Won Hung Lo."

Despite the Gandr that hit the back of his head fifteen seconds later, when Rin finally understood what he'd said, Saber didn't regret anything. At all. "Perhaps not that, then. How about Al Kickurass?"

The two walked in silence for a while, Saber's corporeal form a silent reminder in the edge of Rin's vision. As the church grew taller before them, she thought of the previous battle, her first. Did her father go through that, during the fourth War? That terrible helplessness? She was a Tohsaka, and in the top percent of any student magus, even without the Clock Tower's instruction, but did that really mean anything if she had so little real experience? To be removed from the struggle with nothing but some light and sound, had her father died the same way? Kotomine never talked about his partner's death.

The link to her Servant chose that moment to twinge, reminding her of her Saber. Rin's back straightened, and her stride increased. She had made a mistake, gotten too close to a fight on a level she wasn't ready for- yet.

She'd have to practice her structural grasping, even if it was a terribly base spell, it would be useful if she lost one or more of her senses like earlier. She calmed herself, and visualized her trigger, Od releasing into her body, filling in the mortal frailties and strengthening the rest, increasing her body's strength and durability. Then she grasped the structure of her bones, tissues, nerves, hair, and cloths, as a precaution against misapplied reinforcement, a step she'd not had to perform for nearly three years, performed again for practice's sake.

There, and there. Minor cuts on the forearms, a bruise on her soft tissue, light damage to both inner ears. She healed them all in an instant with a variant of reinforcement. A deeper structural grasp identified a series of corresponding bloodstains on her sweater. The blood wouldn't show on the dark red of her sweater, but she made a note to have it cleaned privately, instead of at the washers.

Rin focused inwards and outwards, expanding the structural grasp to the soles of her feet and through her shoes. She could almost discern the composition of the-

"Master, we're here." Saber's face was grim, joviality gone. Serious, as a Servant should be. Good, perhaps he'd sensed her change in mood.

"I will return shortly. Make sure nothing attacks me while I'm in neutral ground- I don't trust the fake priest to take this seriously."

Rin released her reinforcement, and walked to the back door. The lock was turned with the key Kirei had provided her. "I will wait for him in his office. It may take a while for him to finish with the congregation. But. . . I have a question for you, Saber." She spoke without turning. "How can you be so sure that Archer is Robin Hood?"

"His Noble Phantasm was all around us, master. How could I not recognize Shirwood Forest?"

She could almost hear his blithe smile. "That doesn't make any sense." She replied, to which her Servant only said,

"Perhaps you can't see the forest for the trees?"

"Gah!" Rin ground out, and the doorknob crinkled under her palm, her strength still effected by the residue of her reinforcement. But she took a deep breath, and calmly accepted that the most powerful Servant in the Holy Grail War had a bit of a mouth. He was more bearable than Shinji Matou, at least.

"Master." Saber said suddenly, as he stopped at the doorway.

Rin looked over her shoulder at where Saber stood, her eyes meeting his strangely familiar ones as he faded slowly from view. "Yes?"

"What is it you wish will for?"

She opened her mouth, but did not speak immediately. When she did reply, her voice was quiet, but firm. "My wish? I have no real wish for the Grail but to see the Root with my own senses. What of your wish?"

"I have a mistake I intend to set right."

And with that Rin nodded, and closed the door.

XIXI

_now_

Coming next


End file.
